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Tinfoil hat brigade demands fealty from group of local county sheriffs

Time to bunker up, put on your tinfoil hat and hide your guns and bicycles.

You can’t make this stuff up. Unfortunately, we don’t have to here in Happy Valley.

There they were, hands over their hearts, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance prior to their grilling at the Masonic Lodge last Wednesday. Four elected county sheriffs were up in front of the Western Slope Conservative Alliance, being forced to defend their interactions with federal law enforcement agencies, reassure anxious conservatives they would act according to the Constitution and also protect their constituents against threats from the United Nations and other nefarious interlopers.

Even against a president supposedly anxious to confiscate our guns. Even though there’s been no evidence in the past 3 1/2 years he’s attempting to do any such thing.

The only things missing were tinfoil hats and black helicopters hovering overhead. Or maybe those drones supposedly used by the Environmental Protection Agency to spy on Midwestern farmers, another rumor debunked in the past few days after making its way through conservative political and media circles. It was traced all the way back to one of its originators, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. Fortenberry promptly issued another outraged comment on the weekly “AgMinute” radio program of the House Agriculture Committee after his own rumor circled its way back to him nine days later.

“Are you with us or against us?” was the first question sheriffs Stan Hilkey of Mesa County, Fred McKee of Delta County, Rick Dunlap of Montrose County and Lou Vallario of Garfield County were faced with at the WSCA event.

With whom? Against what?

Oh, yeah, “When the tanks are rolling down the streets” and federal agencies are acting to confiscate our guns, according to one person.

Or our bicycles, if you can believe disgraced former GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes, who, like some of those last Wednesday night, worried about something called Agenda 21, advanced by the United Nations and allegedly behind that outrageous bike-sharing program over in Denver.

I guess I’d better be figuring out how to mount gun racks on our bicycles so I can head for the hills and save the family firearms during the coming apocalypse. (And, yes, even a supposedly liberal newspaper columnist can own and appreciate good firearms, even if he’d rather rely on common sense and a lifetime of shooting experience than National Rifle Association rantings to formulate his opinions on guns, their use and ownership.)

What’s scary is that the group that put on this embarrassing show might not be the most conservative organization in local politics. The WSCA is considered part of the local GOP party structure, RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) by GJ Results, the other folks claiming to be the real “Tea Party” in these parts.

Somewhere, there’s room for realism in political discussions. Somewhere, common sense isn’t uncommon. Somewhere, tanks in the streets, federal gun confiscations and threats from U.N. takeovers are so far down the list of things to worry about that four county sheriffs don’t have to waste their time promising to “stand with you” against imagined excesses by our own government.

Not in Mesa County. And it’s not a new phenomenon around here, as we continue to race to the far right edge of a flat earth and political campaigns center on which candidate is most conservative rather than real issues that might interest informed voters.

Some 20 years ago, I was one of the candidates standing in front of the local Second Amendment committee in Sherwood Park. While I managed to emerge reasonably unscathed, other candidates weren’t so lucky.

I watched Tillie Bishop, already an icon in local and statewide Republican political circles, get thoroughly beat up over some real or imagined legislative slight to unimpeded gun ownership. Tim Foster decided he’d had enough and just left. And a fellow Democrat running for sheriff, Bob Silva, felt compelled to one up the rest of us by declaring that, by God, we all ought to be able to own armed MIG 21s if we wanted to.

We can only wish we had to make this stuff up instead of living with it every day.

“Remember, though, your best weapon is between yours ears and under your scalp, provided it’s loaded.” – Robert A. Heinlein.

Jim Spehar reserves tinfoil for cooking and needs to restock his ammo after some recent target practice. Your comments are welcome at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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By John Wilkenson - Tuesday, June 19, 2012

It is in the nature of wannabe-clever political hacks like Spehar to demonize their opponents rather than directly address specific intellectual points. Hence the reason they so commonly resort to demeaning and meaninglessly unspecific euphemisms such as “tin foil hat brigade.” Stan Hilkey was tad smarter. He merely demonized his opponents by pretending they were “a big group that wants me to be a federal government hater”. Truth be told, the “tin foil hat wearers” and “federal government haters” probably just hate it when disingenuous, self-important government officials deliberately disobey the U.S. Constitution.
There are seven things which are so fatally destructive of reciprocal justice between individuals in society that, in view of the fact their perpetration is entirely a matter of deliberate strategy and implementation by evil elitist individuals, no politician, judge, MSM hack or law enforcement officer of any type will EVER talk about them: 1) The mechanics and ramifications of legal tender laws. 2) The mechanics and ramifications of the differences between commodity (nonfluctuating) mediums of exchange versus political (fluctuating) mediums of exchange. 3) The mechanics and ramifications of taxing consumption (sales tax) versus taxing production (so-called “income” tax). 4) The mechanics and ramifications of the PROVABLE documented fact the Founders voted 9-2 against giving the national (aka “federal”) government the power to print paper money (aka “emit bills of credit”.) 5) The mechanics and ramifications of the fact the states were given the power to declare a legal tender within their boundaries, provided that (pursuant to Article 1 Section 10, Clause 16) any legal tender so declared by a state was restricted to gold and silver coin. 6) The mechanics and ramifications of the blatant, self-evident, UNconstitutional — and, yes, EVIL — unequal protection of law which de facto exists between the buyers of labor and the sellers of labor which is deliberately designed by fascistic criminals in government to facilitate the theft of labor by so-called “capital”. 7) The inherent mechanical/structural flaw and UNsustainability of coercion-based, Power-over-the-Other, One-Ring “government”, which I call the “Government Glitch”. (See http://bit.ly/LAvLI4.)
I suspect that the people Spehar so snottily ridiculed share the philosophy that, regarding the U.S. Constitution, you either obey it or, per Article V, amend it. I happen to share that philosophy. Apparently Spehar doesn’t, although virtually all politicians can be expected to glibly lie about that inconvenient little fact. To me, that makes him the real “tin foil hat” wearer and U.S. Constitution “hater”.

By John Wilkenson - Wednesday, June 20, 2012

One cannot help but notice the radical decline in the number of commenters since the Sentinel instituted the policy of attaching commenters’ real names to their comments. Ostensibly the intent of the new policy was to increase civility. The unintended consequence seems to be a radical decline in participation in the public dialog. To me, at least, it seems that there was a certain distasteful “it’s my newpaper, so I’ll censor as I please” arrogance to the new policy anyway. That will probably prevent any meaningful lessons being learned by the self-anointed censors. Unfortunately, the censors probably see no point in the fact some of the authors of the Federalist Papers used pseudonyms. Personally, I would find increased participation to be more interesting than misguided attempts to control “civility”.

By Dennis Patton - Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Western Slope Conservative Alliance sent out an Activist Alert to its membership on June 19 telling everyone to write letters to the Editor at the Sentinel taking exception to
a column Jim Spehar wrote on the sheriff’s forum they sponsored last week. There was an Alert sent out at 11:20 a.m. asking for emails, phone calls, and snail mail letters
to Mr. Spehar‘s home address, which they printed. It is a despicable and ingenuous way to get others to harass and attack someone they disagree with.

This is the way this bunch of MCRP henchmen have been operating and getting away with it by saying it was a “mistake” or someone “misinterpreted” something. They are now lashing out everyone who is not in lock step with them. They are showing their true colors as more and more information surfaces about them. They can’t refute the documented, provable facts that are coming out and are now available at
wscateaparty.com/

Mr. Spehar did not deserve the attack that was leveled at him and the people responsible owe him a public apology and should be held responsible for their actions. FYI, the name at the bottom of the notice was non other than the prolific Letter to the Editor writer Ms. Marjorie Haun.